Agatha Jassem

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Agatha Jassem is a clinical microbiologist and the program head of the Virology Lab at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory. She is also a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at UBC.

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Research

Dr. Jassem’s primary research area is infectious diseases and immunopathology. Her secondary research area is genetics, genomics proteomics and related approaches.

Her current research focuses on the detection of healthcare- and community-associated infections, emerging pathogens and drug resistance determinants. In particular, she is interested in evaluating novel molecular- and genomic-based techniques for routine clinical and epidemiological use.

Bio

Dr. Jassem holds a BSc (Hons) in biology from York University (2006). She completed her doctoral studies in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at UBC (under the supervision of Dr. David Speert, at the Child & Family Research Institute) (PhD, 2012) and was thrilled to be able to return to UBC after that as a faculty member.

She finished one year of an accredited fellowship through CPED (the Center for Personalized Education for Physicians) at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center (Clinical Microbiology Fellow, 2015), and was certified clinical microbiology in 2016 by the American Board of Medical Microbiology and the Canadian College of Microbiologists.

She is passionate about teaching and science communication, having been involved in many outreach initiatives. When she’s not in the lab, she can be found on the mountains (hiking or snowboarding depending on the season).